Stories of
American Heroes -
Brought to you from the "Home of Heroes" - Pueblo, Colorado

Cast A
Giant Shadow

Brigadier
General
Kenneth Walker

What
do you do with an unrestrained hero?

Reprimand him,
or

Give Him a Medal?

"I was told by
'Chesty' Puller years ago, there is only a hairline's
difference between a Navy Cross and a general court-martial."

Gregory
"Pappy" Boyington

Washington, D.C. was a long way from
Denver, Colorado, especially so during the tense early months of World War
II. Bob Pearson made the trip only because business called him to
the Capitol. It was May 1942 and Bob had brought along his son,
recently graduated from high school. As something of a celebration
before departing for home, the Pearsons scheduled lunch at the Willard
Hotel with Army Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth N. Walker.

Bob and Ken Walker went back to their
early school days in Denver, followed by a life-long friendship.
When time, maturity, and occupational demands separated the two they
maintained contact through a mutual interest in aviation. Young
Lieutenant Walker had flown
into Denver over the Labor Day Weekend in 1919 to take his friend on
sight-seeing tour over the mountains of Estes Park in his Army DH-4
airplane. Fifteen years later when Bob was living in Quincy,
Illinois, Ken Walker had diverted from a cross-country flight to make an
unauthorized visit to his friend.

The mood at the lunch table on this
day early during the spring of 1941 was
somewhat resigned; it was not the normal banter about kids and family.
Lieutenant Colonel Walker's two sons were living on the West Coast with
their mother after the first of two failed relationships--and divorces, in
the past ten years. The only upbeat topic was Walker's military career,
which seemed to be at its zenith. He had missed the First World War
but was now being assigned to combat duty in the South Pacific. He
would not miss the Second World War.

When lunch was finished the two old
friends shook hands and wished each other well. Before Bob Pearson
turned to leave Ken Walker looked him in the eyes and stated flatly: "I've
made a terrible mess of things here. I doubt if I'll be back."

They were the last words Bob Pearson
would ever hear from the scrappy kid he'd known since the two attended
Denver's Maria Mitchell and Columbian Schools.

Kenneth
Newton Walker

Ken Walker was born in Cerrillos,
New Mexico, in 1898, but moved with his mother to Denver in his early
childhood. His father Wallace was an orphan who had been raised by a
foster family with the surname Walker. Apparently as a result of his
own difficult childhood, Wallace Walker never learned to adapt to
marriage and family. Early in Ken's life he deserted his young family, leaving Kenneth embittered against his father
for
the rest of his life. It may indeed have been the lack of a solid
father figure in his own childhood that contributed to many of Kenneth Walker's own problems
in relating to family when he later had one of his own.

In 1912 Kenneth and his mother
moved to Kansas City where the young man attended and graduated from
high school. In 1917 at age nineteen he returned alone to Denver to attend the YMCA
Night School, and then to pursue studies in business administration at La
Salle University. Ten days before Christmas Kenneth Walker joined the Aviation Section of the
Army Signal
Corps Enlisted Reserve. The following June, while American
aviators were tasting their first aerial combat in France, Kenneth Walker was becoming a pilot at the Air Service Flying School at
Mather Field in California. World War I ended on November 11, 1918,
the same month Walker was discharged from the Reserves and
commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Service.

The new and fledgling post-war Army
Air Service was not the best place to be for a young officer looking to
build a military career in the 1920s. It did provide those who chose
the air over the ground an exciting, different kind of military
lifestyle, coupled with some incredible challenges. Lieutenant
Kenneth Walker adapted well to military life, always impeccably
uniformed, orderly in the performance of his duties, and dedicated to
the future of aviation. In September 1922 while stationed at Post
Field in Oklahoma, he married Marguerite Potter, a beautiful,
well-educated "Sooner Queen". Three months later the
young couple were sailing across the Pacific for a two year tour of duty
in the Philippine Islands.

The small group of pilots stationed
at Camp Nichols in the Philippines, thousands of miles from home, were a social
group. Marguerite quickly learned the custom, protocol, and nuances of
hosting that are important to the future of any young military officer.
The Walker's were a wonderful couple to all outward appearances, admired
and envied by others, and well respected by all who knew them.

On the job, Lieutenant
Walker was a hard, efficient worker--if anything a work-a-holic
decades before the malady was given a name. Air Corps duty itself,
half-a-world away from the mainland, was generally uncomplicated
and occasionally interesting. Only hints of the personal problems
that would later become too difficult to overcome were evident in those
early years.

Walker served as commanding officer
of the Air Intelligence Section at Camp Nichols, as well as in other
roles. In December 1923 he was one of six pilots that flew an extended
reconnaissance trip into Zamboanga. Before returning home early in
1925 the Walkers also enjoyed a brief vacation in China.

Back in the United States Lieutenant Walker was assigned to
Langley Field, Virginia, in the summer of 1925. He returned from his
peaceful foreign service to find the Army Air Service engaged in a war
at home...virtually a struggle for survival. Three years earlier
General William Billy Mitchell had revolutionized aerial warfare
by demonstrating that bombers could sink battleships. That
revelation had not been a welcomed one; it was spurned by politicians
and the traditional leadership of both the Army and the Navy. Mitchell
had further ostracized himself from the military establishment by
repeatedly calling for reorganization of the U.S. Military to include
America's airmen as a separate branch of service. Ultimately the
powerful men in the War Department attempted to end his crusade by
reverting him to his permanent rank as a colonel and banishing him
to Fort Hood, Texas--far from Washington, D.C.

Two months after the Walkers moved
into their new home at Langley Field this political war at home reached
critical mass. Two Naval air disasters in August prompted Colonel
Mitchell to issue a prepared statement from Fort Hood charging, "These
accidents are the direct result of the incompetency, criminal negligence
and almost treasonable administration of the national defense by the
Navy and War Departments." Mitchell's proffered gauntlet could not
be ignored. In October a seven week trial began in Washington,
D.C., that resulted in the court-martial of Billy Mitchell and his
suspension from rank, command, and duty for five years. This
sanction prompted the World War I hero and aviation pioneer to resign.

There can be no doubt that Colonel
Mitchell issued his statement fully aware that it would result in his
court-martial. Some people argued that he was an egotist seeking
headlines; others that he saw himself as some sort of sacrificial lamb
doing what he felt needed to be done to bring the plight of the American
Air Service before the public. Whatever the motivation and
reasoning, the court-martial of Billy Mitchell had a strong and sweeping
impact on the men of the Air Service, as well as on the future of aviation:

Billy Mitchell's
unprecedented insubordination established a new pattern for
aggressive advocacy, but

Mitchell's subsequent
conviction, as well as the (at least perceived) banishment of some
of his strongest defenders and defense witnesses including Major
Henry Hap Arnold, warned against going too far in aggressive
advocacy.

The evident truth of the sad
state of American aviation, as testified to by Mitchell and
others, prompted a certain level of internal damage control.
Even before the trial began President Coolidge seated a
distinguished panel under Dwight Morrow to review and suggest as
to the feasibility of a separate air force. Though the Morrow
Board rejected that concept, their hearings played a large
role in the subsequent Air Corps Act of 1926. That
sweeping legislation changed the name of the Army's air arm from
"Air Service" (denoting a role of support to ground
forces) to "Air Corps," indicating a more combat
oriented designation. It further led to increased funding
for a 5-year buildup of the Army Air Corps.

An ancillary effect of the
Mitchell Trial may also have been the effect it had on one of the
trial judges, General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was a
boyhood friend of Billy Mitchell, the Mitchell and MacArthur
families of Milwaukee enjoying a long and legendary
friendship. When called to sit on the trail MacArthur
described it as "One of the most distasteful orders I ever
received." Colonel Mitchell was convicted by a
secret vote of the eight judges and there were rumors (enhanced
by statements made by MacArthur himself,) that Mitchell's boyhood
friend had cast a dissenting vote in his conviction. But the
true nature of that vote was never known, and many men of the U.S.
Army Air Corps, most of whom idolized Billy Mitchell, never forgave
Douglas MacArthur for "betraying his boyhood
friend." Any study of World War II quickly shows suspicion
of and distrust towards MacArthur from many Air Force
pilots. Conversely, MacArthur didn't seemed to fully understand or appreciate his
airmen, or for that matter, to trust them.

A.C.T.S.

If the traditionalists of the Navy
and War Departments were at a loss as to how to effectively administer
their new air arms, it is not without reason. In 1926
heavier-than-air flight was only 23 years old and, as a U.S. military
element, had seen only nine months of combat experience and
testing. Even the young pilots who flew the airplanes and
protested for an independent air force could not define their own role in
warfare and the military establishment.

The internal search for identity
began to take shape in earnest following the Air Corps Act of 1926.
Despite the punishment administered to Colonel Mitchell, in the immediate
aftermath of the trial the new Army Air Corps found itself with not only
increased funding, but some new levels of autonomy. The Air Service
Field Officer's School at Langley Field had been an important part of any
budding Air Service officer's resume since 1921. Following the Air
Corps Act of 1926 the school was renamed the Air Corps Tactical
School (ACTS). The school's mission changed from its original
task of "preparing senior officers for higher Air Service command
duty" to one of defining the role of the Air Corps, i.e. "Tactical
Theory".

It was a timely and badly needed
change, for the budding Air Corps did not yet fully understand its own
role in warfare. Air theorists were divided into two camps: pursuit
and bombers.

Though bombing raids were conducted
throughout World War I and became increasingly frequent and important in the latter
months before the Armistice, it was the PURSUIT (fighter) pilots who
emerged from The Great War as the Air Service heroes. The
role of the fighter pilot, alone in the air and going man-to-man against
enemy pilots, was far more glamorous than that of the bomber pilot droning
over endless miles to drop his explosives and hopefully turn to fly back
home.

Furthermore, it was the pursuit
pilots who had given the Allies air superiority at St. Mihiel, the
September 1918 offensive that first demonstrated the value of the
airplane in coordination with ground operations. The Knights
of the Air had overwhelmed the air forces of the enemy, keeping
their observation balloons and airplanes out of the skies so that the
infantry could advance undetected and unmolested.

Ironically, the argument espoused
by the Pursuit advocates at ACTS tended to substantiate the claims of
the Army and Navy that aviation was an auxiliary to the ground forces,
and therefore should not be separated from them. The pursuit
airplane was another weapon in the arsenal of the ground commander, like
a tank or artillery piece, to be deployed best as a defensive weapon.

Billy Mitchell had argued for a
separate air force because he saw aviation NOT as a defensive weapon, auxiliary
to the ground or naval forces, but as an offensive weapon. He
demonstrated that airborne bombers could sink battleships. He argued
that the best way to win the next war would be through using such
bombers as offensive weapons, to strike at enemy industrial and economic
targets. Those who adopted similar ideas for aerial warfare
separated into the Bomber Camp, leading to several years of
internal debate at ACTS. It was the kind of debate the Air Corps
needed, for out of it came a new sense of identity. When
Lieutenant Walker entered ACTS as a student in 1928 he quickly ascribed
to the Bomber Camp, becoming one of its most vocal advocates.

From 1929 to 1934 Lieutenant Walker
remained at ACTS as a bombardment instructor. While the Air
Corps searched for its own identity, Lieutenant Walker had finally found
his. Perhaps more than any man in history, Kenneth Walker defined
the meaning of the term Strategic Bombardment for future
wars. Though he would not live to see it, the air strategies
debated and refined at ACTS during those five years ultimately lead to
the defeat of Adolph Hitler in World War II.

"Victory
smiles upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of
war, not upon those who wait
to adapt themselves
after the changes
occur." Giulio Douhet

Strategic Bombardment

General Billy Mitchell was not
the only forward thinking airmen of the early days of military
aviation, nor the only one to have trouble convincing his country
of the full potential of the airplane as a military weapon.
In Italy, Guilio Douhet fought the same battle with similar
results. Mitchell detractors, in fact, were prone to excuse
the American visionary as one who had simply learned, then
adopted, the ideas and strategies of Douhet. It was no
secret that Mitchell admired Douhet and, though he never referred
to him in his own writings, he spoke of his ideas in many conversations.

In 1912 Douhet
was appointed to lead Italy's first aviation battalion and went
on to serve...and observe...the warfare of World War I.
Though most often thought of in terms of aviation, his
observations were wide-ranging and varied. His hypothesis
was basically that technological advances (not only the the airplane
but also machine guns and poison gas,) made ground warfare obsolete,
and gave the advantage to a defending army instead of the
offensive force. He reasoned, for instance, that if one soldier in a
trench had a gun that could fire one round per minute and it took
an attacker one minute to cross the terrain that separated him
from that position, two attackers working in tandem would over-run
the position. Similarly, if the defender had a machine gun
that could fire 100 rounds per minute, the enemy would have to
send 101 attackers to seize the position held by a single
man. If the position were protected with barbed wire it
would increase the attackers' time to five minutes, and would require
501 men to assault and overcome a lone defender. If the
logic sounded strange, it was nevertheless, well-founded.

Douhet's primary
interest, however, was in the airplane. He was unimpressed
with the effect of Pursuit Warfare, except to fly
protection for bombers. He wrote: "They (fighter
planes) would be
completely wasted in engagements with other fighters because only
a few enemy planes are destroyed, no land is captured, and the
enemy's will is unaffected. All glory--no results."

The operative
words for Douhet were "The Enemy's Will", and
from that he developed his warfare doctrine of strategic
bombing. In more modern vernacular, he believed that the
best defense was a strong (aerial) offense:

Bomb and
destroy the enemy's air force on the ground before they can marshal
them against your own forces, and

Douhet's vision,
though flawed in many ways, was decades ahead of his time.
When Douhet wrote Il domino dell'aria in 1921, no nation on
earth had long-range bombers capable of the kind of warfare Douhet
prophesied. The fact that technology had not caught up to
theory did not stop him from continuing to write, or from urging
his nation to develop a separate Air Force with air officers
capable of directing such warfare when that technology finally
caught up.

Douhet's
outlandish (at that time) ideas also did not prevent the cadre at
ACTs from adding a 5-page extract from his book to their files in
1921, or from using a 100-page translation for instruction the
following year.

"The
well-organized, well-planned, and well-flown
air force (bombing) attack
will constitute an offensive that cannot be stopped."

Giulio Douhet would have loved
those words, might have used the quote himself if had had thought of
it. That single sentence summarized nicely the strategic theory espoused in the hundreds of pages he had written
since the end of World War I. That sentence however, is most often
attributed to United States Army Corps Lieutenant Kenneth N.
Walker. It did summarize Walker's own thinking. (The first
utterance of that now-famous litany may have actually been made by ACTS'
assistant commandant, Major Walter H. Frank, who served as umpire for
aerial maneuvers held in Ohio in 1929.)

When Ken Walker graduated from ACTS
in 1929 the prevailing doctrine at the school belonged to the Bomber
Group, though there remained a fair contingent of pursuit
advocates. One of Walker's ACTS instructors was Robert Olds, an
air officer who
had served as an aide to Billy Mitchell. Olds evangelistically
shared Mitchell's concepts of strategic bombardment in the classroom,
and Kenneth Walker became his star pupil. By the time Walker
graduated in 1929 he was convinced that the bomber would soon replace
pursuit aircraft as the predominant Air Corps weapon. When he
returned the following year as an ACTS instructor himself, the
combination of Olds and Walker was hard to argue against. During
that first year at ACTS Walker also rewrote the bombardment text for the
Air Corps, which was reprinted with only minor updates and corrections in 1931.

Like Douhet before him, Walker's
written ideas were not predicated upon current available
technology. Looking to the future, Walker believed that American
ingenuity and industrial power would create not only long range bombers
capable of carrying tons of bombs, but the means to accurately deliver
those bombs from a high altitude beyond the range of anti-aircraft
fire. Furthermore, his concepts were deviously simple in many
regards. Strategic targets were not only factories that created
weapons of warfare, but factories that created smaller items
necessary for the tools of war. One might bomb a factory that
turned out tanks and destroy a few vehicles under construction. On
the other hand, a
well-aimed bombing attack on a ball-bearing factory that created the
small items necessary to make a tank operate, might well halt the entire
production of enemy tanks (as well as other machinery that required
ball-bearings) for a considerable period of time.

When classes began in 1930
Lieutenant Kenneth Walker was comfortable in the niche he had worked so
hard all his life to find. He was sometimes even referred to as the "high
priest" of strategic bombing. Few dared argue "pursuit vs.
bombing" with Kenneth Walker, and proponents of the latter strategy might well have
steamrolled through the ongoing controversy in the years that followed
but for a new student who arrived with the 1930 class at ACTS.

Claire L. Chennault arrived with a
reputation as a top pursuit pilot with all the positives and negatives
that are traditionally inherent in a good fighter pilot. No man
alive could have swayed Kenneth Walker's belief that bombers would
replace fighter planes. Conversely, even the irascible
Kenneth Walker could not convince Chennault that bombers were second to
pursuit in the winning of wars. The stage was set for a classic
clash of ideas which, despite its intensity, was ultimately good for
ACTS and the future of aviation.

Despite their differences, the two men had much in
common. Each was single-minded and obsessed with his personal
theory for the future of combat aviation. Either man could become
quite animated and emotional in the debates that followed.
Chennault was a heavy smoker; Kenneth Walker smoked more.
Students from the period did tend to give the
edge to Walker, who generally was more vehement in his expressions than
the blatantly blunt but soft-toned, southern-drawled
Chennault. All knew that there could be no winner when the two men
engaged in the "bomber vs. pursuit" debates, but the diatribe was at the
very least, most entertaining. As the school year wore on it was
not unusual during moments of relative boredom, for others to maneuver
the two opponents into a verbal battle. Observers later described
the two men as "rabid".

Lieutenant Walker did hold two
advantages over Chennault. One was the overwhelming support of a
majority of the cadre at ACTS for his position on bombardment. The
other was the fact that Kenneth Walker was a popular instructor and
well-liked by almost everyone who ever met him. Chennault had a
rough exterior and an abrasive personality, personality traits some would say
are two commodities
that make up a good fighter pilot. All that aside, Chennault was
not well-accepted or liked by many of the students, and he was hard
pressed for allies even among those who agreed with his position on
pursuit vs. bombardment.

When Lieutenant Walker left ACTS in
1933, the five years of study and debate at Langley Field had crystallized
into a well-defined doctrine of deployment and tactics for America's air
assets. It was based around high-altitude, daylight precision
bombing attacks, neither of which the Air Corps had the technology to
accomplish in 1933. Like Douhet, Kenneth Walker anticipated that
the necessary heavy bombers and aerial targeting technology would
develop in the future, and continued to be the leader in defining this
role. He is often accredited with creation of the term
"bombardier", which was sprinkled liberally through his
writings as a synonym for the traditional term
"bomber".

Walker's 1931 and subsequent
writings spelled out what became generally accepted Air Corps theory for
aerial warfare:

"Whenever we speak in
terms of 'air force' we are thinking of bombardment
aviation."

"Bombardment
aviation, properly employed, can shatter a nation's will to
resist; it can destroy the economical and industrial structures
which made possible the very existence of modern
civilization."

As to the subject of a separate
(from the Army and Navy) American Air Force, Walker believed as Billy Mitchell had proclaimed throughout the previous
decade, that an adequate American Air Force would be our nation's best,
first line of defense against aggression:

"No enemy would
consider launching an invasion (against the United States) if he
were convinced that we were in possession of a bombardment force
capable of destroying (vital enemy establishments)."

"The importance of an
air force to our national security (should be appreciated) not in
terms, for example, of a mere adjunct to our ground forces, such
as cavalry or field artillery and designed only to further the
infantry mission--but as a force with a distinct mission, of
importance co-equal to that of the Army and the Navy."

For Claire Chennault, the turning
tide of Air Corps doctrine was a difficult defeat. In 1937 he
resigned from the Air Corps citing health problems; he had been ill
through much of his career. Many of his own theories of pursuit
combat and his emphasis upon early warning systems were validated five
years later when he commanded the famous Flying Tigers of the
American Volunteer Group in the China-Burma theater. Time and
World War II would further validate many of the concepts of both Walker
and Chennault, and illustrate the associated weaknesses in their
individual myopic views of air doctrine. Ultimately, their debates
were critical to the growth and definition of the Air Corps that both men
loved.

Problems
at Home

When Lieutenant Walker departed
ACTS in 1933 he had given the Army nearly fifteen years of his life and
was still a first lieutenant. He had earned his silver bar upon
being commissioned in the Regular Army in 1920, reverted back to second
lieutenant in 1922, and then reclaimed first lieutenant in 1924.
There were jokes that he was the most senior first lieutenant in the Air
Corps.

From 1933 to 1935 Lieutenant Walker
was assigned to the Command and General Staff School at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas. The focus at CGSS was on training and
preparing officers for higher command with ground forces, hardly the
kind of curricula an air enthusiast like Walker wanted or felt he
needed. Throughout his career Walker had always been immaculate, impeccable
in uniform and protocol, and well-organized in the performance of
duty--perhaps even to a fault. But CGSS was important to the
resume of an ambitious officer and Walker dutifully completed the
course. He was promoted to captain
shortly after graduating in 1935.

The Walker family at Fort
Leavenworth in the fall of 1933 with two small boys, Kenneth N. Walker,
Jr., who was now six years old, and an infant son named Douglas.
Upon their arrival the elder Walker took his oldest son for his first
airplane ride, flying in a two-seater to point out the family's new home
below. It was a rare personal moment in the life of a man obsessed
with his work; it was one of the few good memories of his father that
Ken, Jr., was left. In the following year things only became worse.

Those who knew Ken Walker during
his life were invariably attracted to him; he was an easily likable
man. Still, those who knew him described him as obsessed with his
work, unable to relax, and highly driven. These were the character
traits that enabled him to define an air force, draft the plan to win
World War II, and become an Air Force legend. They were also the
flaws that led to two divorces and his subsequent comment in
May 1942 that, "I've
made a terrible mess of things here."

In 1934 Marguerite and the two
Walker boys moved to Roanoke, Virginia, (and later to
California). Kenneth Walker remarried soon thereafter, fathering a
son named John. Ken Walker maintained contact with his two older
sons, but quickly lost all contact with the infant when the second
marriage ended shortly after John's birth.

Perhaps the most notable event of
the period during which Walker was serving in Kansas came late in 1934,
when he was invited to testify before the Howell Commission of
the newly formed Federal Aviation Commission. The hearings were
part of an ongoing series of investigations by numerous boards and
commissions into the "air forces" issue, prompted in large
part by numerous fatal accidents following the ill-conceived policy of
using Air Corps planes and pilots to fly the mail. Walker was
joined by Robert Olds, Donald Wilson, and ACTS friend and bombardment
advocate Harold George.

Though nearly a decade had passed
since the court martial of Billy Mitchell, the response to his
aggressive advocacy of a separate air force still weighed heavily on the
minds of all airmen and tempered their remarks. War Department
policy endorsed the opinion of the 1925 Morrow Board and subsequent 1934
Baker Board that the Air Corps should remain under the War
Department and U.S. Army control. Walker and his fellow witnesses were cautioned
by the general staff to insure that their testimony adhered to this
official policy.

Despite "official policy"
and "the ghost of the court martial of Billy Mitchell," Lieutenant Walker
and his fellow aviators mustered the courage to testify their
convictions. George advised the board that the airplane was a
METHOD of waging war, not just a weapon like a rifle. Olds
advocated investing in building a strong air force, reminding the
commission that "what we maintain during peace is what we have
to fight with when war begins."

Wilson addressed the air force as
the primary tool for national defense, noting that the climate in Europe
was already pointing towards potential for future conflict. Walker
was succinct in his daring testimony. "National Defense is
not the responsibility alone, of an Army, a Navy, or yet of an Air
Force. It is the mission of the combined forces, in which each
must play its part," he advised. "Unless we
create an adequate and separate Air Force, this next war will begin in
the air and end in the mud--in the mud and debris of the demolished
industries that have brought us to our knees."

After hearing 191 witnesses the
commission was quick to note the lack of any unanimity among those who
testified, and would not recommend a separate air force. "There
is ample reason," the Commission did report, "to
believe that aircraft have now passed far beyond their former position
as useful auxiliaries, and must in the future be considered and utilized
as an important means of exerting directly the will of the Commander in
Chief."

The untainted testimony of Walker,
Olds, George and Wilson was a courageous action that might well have
ended their careers. Ultimately General C. E. Kilbourne,
Assistant Chief of Staff, War Plans Division, concluded that the four men
who voiced their convictions despite official
policy gave a "constructive presentation." Their
actions appear to have had no negative influence on their careers; they
also failed to obtain the independent air force they believed was
necessary for the next war.

In 1935 as Captain Kenneth Walker
settled into his new assignment with the 11th Bombardment Squadron, 7th
Bomb Group at Hamilton Field, California, two events occurred that
set the stage for the ultimate test of his theories of aerial
bombardment.

One of the leaders in aircraft
design in the early 1930s was Clairmont Egtvedt, a forward thinking
engineer who went on to become chairman of Boeing. While
delivering an early fighter to the Navy he was struck by a Naval
officer's observance that, despite all the progress in the field of
aviation, there was still no counterpart to the battleship in the aerial
arsenal. When the Army issued a challenge to aircraft
manufacturers in 1934 to develop a multi-engine bomber capable of speeds
above 200 miles and hour and with a service ceiling of 20,000 - 25,000
feet, the race was on to build the first battleship counterpart.

On
July 28, 1935, Egtvedt unveiled his new 4-engine, all metal Boeing Test
Bomber Model 229, forerunner of the B-17. In test flights the
giant battleship of the air averaged 252 miles per hour, setting a
non-stop speed record from Seattle to Wright Field in Dayton,
Ohio. Technology was finally catching up to theory, and the Air
Corps at last had a bomber capable of operating from its home base
to transport tons of bombs and deliver them on an enemy target hundreds
of miles away. Five .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns
spread throughout the bomber's 70-foot length, providing it with a
veritable wall of protection against enemy fighters. Though
technical details remained shrouded in secrecy, the large Boeing bomber
captured the attention of all who saw her and the press reports
referred to it as a Flying Fortress. The moniker would
stick for generations.

That same year inventor Carl Norden
introduced a new bomb sight. It was a complicated device into which a
bombardier dialed such variables as air speed, drift, and altitude while
scanning the countryside below through an optical lens. Once set,
the gyroscopes could control the airplane and drop its bombs on a target
miles below. The new invention was so accurate that bombardiers often
exclaimed they could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from
20,000 feet. When asked once if that assessment was true,
Norden reportedly responded, "Which pickle would you like to
hit."

Coupled with the Flying
Fortress, the Norden Bomb Sight at last made possible the
kind of high-altitude, daylight bombing of distant enemies that
Douhet had envisioned and that men like Kenneth Walker had
believed would some day be possible.

Even more than the B-17,
the bomb sight was shrouded in utmost secrecy. During
World War II more than 45,000 bombardiers were trained in its
use. Each swore an oath to carefully guard the secrets of
the Norden Bomb Sight. In the field a similar oath to
protect the sight from falling into enemy hands was repeated by
bombardiers before their missions.

During the war the sight
was normally installed before each mission, then removed upon
completion and carefully guarded. When Colonel Jimmy
Doolittle conducted his famous Tokyo bombing raid in April 1942,
one of the first concerns was for protecting the secret of the
Norden Bomb Sight. All of Doolittle's bombers were stripped of the
Norden Sight, and replaced with a more rudimentary aiming
device.

The Bombardier's
Oath

Mindful of
the secret trust about to be placed in me by my Commander
in Chief, the President of the United States, by whose
direction I have been chosen for bombardier training...

And mindful
of the fact that I am to become guardian of one of my
country's most priceless military assets, the American
bombsight...

I do here,
in the presence of Almighty God, swear by the Bombardier's
Code of Honor to keep inviolate the secrecy of any and all
confidential information revealed to me, and further to
uphold the honor and integrity of the Army Air Forces, if
need be, with my life itself.

The B-17 prototype (Model 299) was
destroyed in a crash on October 30, 1935, only three months after it was
unveiled in Seattle. But the merits of the new Flying Fortress
were obvious and the Air Corps ordered more. The first of
fourteen bombers in the initial service-test order were delivered in
1937. On December 23, 1937, Denver, Colorado, newspaper headlines
reported: "FLYING FORTRESS CRACKS UP IN DENVER BUT CREW OF NINE
ESCAPES INJURY." The bomber that failed in its attempt to
lift off from Denver Municipal Airport, that then jumped a six foot embankment and slid half-a-mile to come to rest in the middle of a highway, was
piloted by a hometown boy--Kenneth Walker. His
"presence of mind" and "expert maneuvering" were
credited with preventing loss of life or more extensive
damage.

Two months after the Denver crash
Kenneth Walker was assigned to a 3-year tour of duty in Hawaii, first as
operations officer for the 5th Bomb Group and then ironically enough,
as commander of the 18th Pursuit Group based out of Wheeler Field.
Even among the Pursuit pilots, bombardment's "high priest" was
a well-liked officer. Kenneth Walker was the kind of commander who
always looked out for the men who served under him, and such an attitude
was greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately Ken Walker the
father, never learned to relate so well to his own family. During
the summer of 1940 Ken Walker, Jr., came to visit his father in Hawaii
for a month. It was their first time together since the
divorce. The two enjoyed a few sight-seeing trips but the elder
Walker seemed unable to find his niche as a father, or to find the ways to
express his love. Marguerite later recalled, "He was a good
father....but his career came first."

AWPD-1The Plan to
Defeat Hitler

The year 1941 was a good year for
the Army Air Corps. On July 20 the organization was expanded and
renamed the "U. S. Army Air Force". Air Corps Chief Henry Hap Arnold
got a new title...Chief of the Army Air Force...and a few months
later he got a third star making him a lieutenant general. General
Arnold's role placed him in a position to report directly to the Army's
Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. The Army Air Force,
while not yet independent of or co-equal with the Army, had at last taken a
major step towards both high level recognition and new levels of
autonomy.

General Arnold's Assistant Chief,
Plans, was Brigadier General Carl A. "Tooey" Spaatz, an old
friend of Ken Walker from his days at ACTS. In January 1941
Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Walker returned from Hawaii for a position in
General Spaatz's office, which also employed old friend Robert
Olds. Since both Arnold and Spaatz leaned more towards an air
force built around bombardment over pursuit, the climate was ripe for
Walker's doctrines to flourish.

A major project of the Plans
Division that year was the reorganization of the Air Corps to provide
some degree of independence in operation. General Arnold was
granted an air staff comparable to the Army's General Staff and some of
the first problems to be addressed were related to that
reorganization. Another of Ken Walker's jobs, ironically enough,
was to provide guidance and assistance to retired Captain Richard
Alworth of the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO).
This was a project initially rejected by General Arnold, who had been in
turn over-ruled by the President himself.

Though war was raging in Europe the
United States was still at peace and operating under an outward policy
of neutrality. Inside the highest levels of government however,
there was increasing concern over Nazi aggression in Europe and Japanese
expansion and aggression in Asia and the Pacific. CAMCO was a
highly secret organization with a quasi-official sanction to send
American pilots and equipment to China to fight in her defense as part
of the AVG, the American Volunteer Group. The man who organized
and led that defense, the man whom Kenneth Walker indirectly worked for
in the spring of 1941, was Claire Chennault.

In July President Roosevelt
requested a plan from both the War Department and the Department of the
Navy to examine and estimate the production requirements necessary to
defeat potential enemies should the United States be forced to choose
sides in the ongoing war. For three weeks the Army's War Plans
Division (WPD) met to speculate and draft their report. The most
elusive information needed for that report dealt with air assets.
It was elusive because there was no precedent upon which to base an estimate.

Among the WPD staff was Lieutenant
Colonel Clayton Bissell, a World War I ace. Bissell suggested that
the WPD obtain assistance from General Arnold's new (under the
reorganization of 1941) Air War Plans Division (AWPD) which was headed
up by Lieutenant Colonel Harold George. When the WPD agreed to
call for advice, George provided a counter-offer: the AWPD would
actually WRITE the air annex for the report.

It was a monumental task with an
impossible deadline. The new AWPD consisted primarily of three
planning officers: George, Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Walker, and Major
Haywood Hansell. These were being called upon to accomplish a job
that should have been prepared by scores of officers over a period of
months. Their deadline for completion was fewer than two weeks
away. Even so, it was the opportunity for which airmen had pleaded
for decades. Major Hansell summed up the three men's motivation when
he said, "We realized instinctively that a major milestone
had been reached. Suddenly, without anywhere near the opposition
we expected, we found ourselves able to plan our own
future."

For nine days the three men
developed and wrote a plan for organizing, equipping, deploying, and
employing the Army Air Force to defeat Germany and/or Japan should the
United States be dragged into the war. Not only was the future of
the Air Force at stake in their efforts, perhaps the fate of the entire
country. The men walked a fine line, balancing what they believed
would be necessary to win that war, against a historical reluctance
to properly finance and support air power.

The three men also had to revisit
the argument of bombers vs. pursuit, and recommend the quantity of air
assets accordingly. As could be expected, bombardment won out, but
pursuit was not ignored. At midnight on August 11 the finished
plan, subsequently labeled AWPD-1, was turned over to the War
Department. The three men had not only measured, predicted, and advised as to
the air assets the looming war might require, but they developed a tactical
air plan for
defeating the enemy. The foundation of that victory, they
postulated, would be built
upon massive, daylight bombing missions to cripple the enemy's ability
to sustain the war and pave the way for a land invasion. Though
the plan saw some revisions in the years that followed, it is not over-simplistic
to note that it was this very plan indeed, that ultimately led to the
defeat of the Third Reich. (Ironically, the tactics put forth in AWPD-1
are strikingly similarly to the U.S. Air Force bombing campaign that
brought Baghdad and Sadam Hussein to their knees more than
half-a-century later.)

In retrospect, historians today are
amazed that three men could so thoroughly have defined that
war plan in just nine days. The fact is, AWPD-1 was formulated by
hundreds of airmen. A balanced and strategically sound war plan
annex was delivered to the President in September 1941 because of the
five years of debate that had caused occasional concern at ACTS a decade
earlier. The three men of AWPD had simply recalled all they had
heard, and then committed those lessons to paper.

Ken Jr. and Douglas (Walker) met their father at the airport in
Los Angeles. There had been a similar meeting when he came
through Los Angeles en route from Hawaii to Washington. On
that earlier occasion, the first time Douglas remembered his
father at all, he wore a business suit and took his sons shopping
and then to lunch. This time, he wore his uniform--first
khakis, then the three went to his hotel where he changed into
full dress. He bought a bouquet of flowers for Marguerite,
then he and the boys boarded a trolley to her home in Glendale.

"You
can imagine the immense pride I experienced," Douglas later
wrote, "as the passengers on the crowded trolley began to
realize there was a general officer standing among
them."

Only
nine years old, Douglas also felt "an odd sensation of
verification. Here I was, like everyone I knew, with a
father." He remembered little more about the visit,
except that his father kissed his mother politely on the cheek,
then stood in the kitchen door and talked to her as she finished
preparing their meal.

Kenneth
Walker had done all he could do in the States. The next day, he
boarded a plane and turned his face toward the Southwest Pacific.

Martha
ByrdKenneth Walker, Airpower's
Untempered Crusader

The
Flying General

Newly promoted Brigadier General Kenneth
Walker arrived in Australia in July 1942 to find the Far East American Air Force
(FEAAF)
in a state of total disarray. The command supposedly consisted of
five bombardment groups, three pursuit groups, two transport squadrons, and one
photographic squadron. Most were grossly under strength and trying to
conduct warfare in badly battered equipment. One of the bombardment
groups was the 19th, which had been nearly decimated in the Philippines during
the first weeks of the war. Those bombers that had survived were beat up,
battle-scarred, worn down, and unreliable. The 19th Bomb Group's B-17s
were so far beyond reliability that General MacArthur, even after his
harrowing escape from Corregidor in a battered PT boat, had refused to fly out of
harm's way at Mindanao in one of them.

That incident had been the final straw in
another of the major problems in the FEAAF, a lack of confidence in the
command structure. MacArthur not only had no confidence in the airplanes
of his air force, he had no confidence in his air commander Lieutenant General
George Brett. After the fiasco at Mindanao MacArthur had wired
Washington, D.C., to have his air chief immediately replaced. General
Arnold assigned the one man he believed could accomplish two goals: organize
his air force, and, stand face-to-face with MacArthur who had a reputation of
being exceedingly demanding of his top commanders. That man was a World
War I veteran who had flown 75 combat missions, shot down two enemy planes,
survived being shot down himself, and earned the Distinguished Service Cross
and Silver Star. He was Major General George Kenney.

When General Walker arrived at Brisbane
early in July along with Brigadier General Enis C. Whitehead, Kenney was still
en route and Brett was still in charge. There was little that could be
done immediately to correct the problems in MacArthur's air force, for Brett
himself had been locked out of MacArthur's headquarters for three
months. Though MacArthur knew nothing of air operations, because he had
virtually no confidence in the airmen or their machines, he made all the
decisions. His chief of staff General Richard K. Sutherland, an equally obstinate
and perhaps even more overbearing commander than MacArthur himself, ordered
all air missions.

To occupy Walker and Whitehead until
General Kenney arrived, Brett instructed the two men to make separate
inspection tours of the various squadrons throughout the theater.
Despite the fact that General Sutherland was now directing all air operations,
Brett also asked Walker to evaluate current bombardment methods and strategies
in the hope that things might change with the arrival of Kenney.

In an interview after the war General
Whitehead stated that upon his arrival in Australia he was, "shocked
by the confusion and lack of organization" he found. The
inspection tours the two new American generals in Australia conducted through
the month of July served only to reflect that his observation was an
understatement. The airmen themselves knew that their Supreme Allied
Commander had no confidence in his air arm, and it seemed that every American
officer in Australia with a star on his collar also had a "chip on his
shoulder". Morale was at a very low ebb.

The Air Force's newest general proved to
be something different. As Ken Walker toured the squadrons throughout
Australia, he appeared to honestly care about what was happening, and seemed genuinely
interested in the work the men were doing. General Walker wanted to fly
missions with his men, to take the same risks that they took, and to fully
understand what they were facing. The man with a star on his collar actually even waited in the
chow line with them instead, of seeking any preference because of his
rank. One story circulated that a corporal in line ahead of the general
once offered to exchange places, but Walker declined saying he would wait his
turn. At that very moment a second lieutenant passed through,
confidently cutting into the front of the line. General Walker, the
story continued, left his position and walked to the serving line where he took
the upstart young officer by the arm and escorted him to the end of the line
to await his turn.

And fly General Walker DID! His
first flight on a B-17 was an unarmed reconnaissance mission that saw no enemy fighter
resistance. Walker later admitted, "I was foolishly disappointed
for a while." A short time later Japanese anti-aircraft fire
erupted from below and Walker recalled, "Shell fragments sounded like
hail on the wings, and we got one fair-sized hole in the right wing. It
was my first time under fire, but I was so interested that I forgot to feel
concerned."

Walker's flights had a purpose beyond a
drive for excitement. The high priest of strategic bombardment wanted
to test and observe the doctrines he had preached for more than a
decade. Unfortunately, war in the South Pacific was outside the scope of
the massive bombardment of enemy industry that Walker had always believed
would cripple a foe. The Japanese had no industrial complexes in the
theater. Instead, the targets were against ships that flooded the region with
war materials and Japanese troops. These ships were a far smaller target
than a large factory, and were often underway, making them difficult moving
targets. For all the bombs that
rained from the B-17s operating out of Australia, little damage was being
done. Thus Walker's repeated missions with his fliers became a method of
observing their effect and revising tactics.

Walker's decision to fly
with his men and share their risks had an immediate and profoundly
positive impact on morale. This was noted, along with the
value of his first-hand observations, when he was awarded the
Silver Star in August.

Captain Fred Dollenburg,
Walker's aide and pilot once told news reporters, "The
general figures he can't tell the boys how to go out and get
shot at unless he's willing to get shot at too."

Regarding Walker's uncommon
practice (for a general officer) of waiting in chow lines,
mingling with his men on a personal level, and treating the
lowest ranking man with dignity and respect, clerk/typist
William Travis recalled, "(General Walker was) the best
soldier I ever knew, from every point of view. Even
without the externals of rank, you knew he was the
general."

For
gallantry in action over Port Moresby, New Guinea, during
July 1942. This Officer took part in four different
missions over enemy territory, each time being subjected
to heavy enemy fire from anti-aircraft and fighter planes.
The large amount of first-hand information gained by
General Walker has proved of inestimable value in the
performance of his duties. His complete disregard for
personal safety, above and beyond the call of duty, has
proved highly stimulating to the morale of all Air Force
personnel with whom he has come in contact. Such courage
and gallantry are in keeping with the finest American
traditions and are worthy of the highest commendation.

Walker was unimpressed with
Australia ("things are a little drab"), deeply
saddened by the living conditions of his men, aghast at the deplorable
condition of their equipment, and angered by the lack of organization
and supply. But he did find one thing to admire in the quagmire
that was the 1942 FEAAF, the young pilots and their crews. These
were brave young men who
struggled with almost nothing, to turn back a seemingly unbeatable
advance of Japanese aggression in the South Pacific. Whenever a
bombing mission was mounted, half of the assigned aircraft would often
be forced to turn back due to mechanical failures. When bombers
got through to their destination, their bombs seldom hit the
targets.

Walker was impressed with the fact that the B-17s had a
good record of fighting off attacking Zeroes. This validated his
fundamental doctrine that a well-flown bombing mission couldn't be
stopped. Force by fuel limitations to conduct long-range
operations without fighter escorts, the heavily armed B-17s
generally held their own against enemy pursuit. In an August 11
letter to his sons back in California Walker wrote in part:

"(I) Was up at a
Pursuit Group in NW last week. The group has shot down 60 Jap planes
and has lost only five in combat--a pretty good record. All
the pilots are young kids--with a fine spirit. One of the
pilots I met has 10 japs to his credit--a couple of others had eight
apiece. We have had of course and will continue to have
losses--they don't shoot rubber bullets--but our boys will lick
them.

"(I) Just had dinner
with a 2d Lt who is just out of the hospital. A zero got on his tail
and shot him down. He bailed out at around 500 feet. Pulled
out of a dive of about 500 mph and managed to get out. These
young pilots are plenty brave.

"General George Kenney
has just arrived to relieve General Brett who is going to
Washington. (I) Am very happy that George is taking command
and know that he will make a splendid commander and I'm proud to
serve under him."

"Every
time (General Hap Arnold) got something going wrong, he
would say, 'Send George Kenney out there; he is a lucky
SOB. He will straighten it out.' I never was
supposed to have any brains. I was just lucky.
(General George
Churchill Kenney)

Major
General George Kenney

General
Arnold's trouble shooter was pretty comfortable in
the Spring of 1942, commanding the Fourth Air Force based at
the Presidio in San Francisco. His crisis
during the early days of the war tended to be simplistic
and mundane, like the young lieutenant he had reprimanded
only moments before General Arnold's call. The P-38
pilot had been stunting in the worst way. First,
he'd looped-the-loop around the Golden Gate Bridge.
Then he'd buzzed in low over Market Street while waving to
secretaries on the second floor of their office buildings. Kenney chewed out the young air officer, then dispatched him
to Oakland to help a woman who had complained that the
low-flying fighter had blown her clothes off the line
where she'd hung them to dry.

General
Arnold's call, arriving even as the chastened lieutenant
departed, suddenly complicated General Kenney's
life. Hap Arnold had problems in Australia where the Far
East American Air Force was a mess. It was the place
where General MacArthur's Chief of
Staff had literally excluded the top air commander from MacArthur, and where the supreme commander himself
was demanding the air commander's immediate
replacement. George Brett was out and Arnold needed
someone to replace him, clean up the mess, and if at all
possible to prove to MacArthur that his air force could be a
major factor in his Pacific War.

In fact,
Kenney had not been General Arnold's first choice.
Initially Hap wanted to sent Lieutenant General Frank
Andrews, but the commander of the Caribbean Defense
Command had been at odds with MacArthur for years.
In so many words Andrews advised Arnold that he was
appalled that the air chief would even consider that he
would ever work for MacArthur. The two men's previous
battles and mutual, long-standing distaste for each other
aside, every officer in the Army knew that Douglas
MacArthur was a demanding and difficult man to work for.

Arnold's
deputy chief, General Laurence S. Kuter, then recommended
Kenney for the job. Arnold was dubious. The
World War I hero and outspoken air advocate had a tendency
to speak his mind in blunt and sometimes caustic
fashion. Arnold doubted Kenney would last long under
MacArthur, but the man's qualifications matched those
called for by the impossible mission at hand. Arnold called
Kenney to Washington to reassign him.

Kenney
did not have General Andrew's reluctance towards working
for MacArthur; his major complaint was the nature of his
mission. Under the ABC-1 War Plan hammered out with
Churchill the previous year, the Pacific campaign was was secondary
to defeating Hitler in German. Kenney was not happy
with an assignment that called on him to wage a strictly
defensive war. His objections aside, Kenney
dutifully accepted the assignment and laid out a few requirements of his own. He wanted
3,000 parafrag bombs shipped to Australia for his
arsenal. He also wanted fifty P-38s and pilots of
the Fourth Air Force transferred to
his new command in Australia. Among those pilots he
wanted to include the young officer he had just finished
chewing out when Arnold called him to Washington, a daring
young pilot by the name of Lieutenant Richard Ira Bong.

General
Kenney arrived in Australia at the end of July and was
summoned almost immediately to MacArthur's office.
The Allied Commander waved his new air chief to a black
sofa and then began speaking while he paced the
floor. "For the next half hour, I really
heard about the shortcoming of the Air Force in general
and the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific in
particular," he later wrote in his
autobiography. "They couldn't bomb, their
staff work was poor, and their commanders knew nothing
about leadership."

Throughout
the tirade Kenney kept his cool, returning MacArthur's
gaze with his own. He later remembered MacArthur
seemed to be "appraising" him as he talked,
sizing him up. General George Kenney was up to the
challenge and thus advised MacArthur after the long
lecture. "If for any reason, I found
that I couldn't work for him, I would tell him so and do
everything in my power to get relieved," Kenney
remembered telling his new boss.

When
Kenney had finished his own brief comments MacArthur
walked to him, put his arm around his shoulders and said, "George,
I think we're going to get along."

For
Kenney's predecessor General Brett it had been less a
matter of getting along with MacArthur, than one of
even getting through to him. Even before he had
fallen out of favor with his boss, Brett had found it
difficult to communicate with or to him. MacArthur's Chief
of Staff General Sutherland was overly efficient in
screening the commander's appointments, calls, and
visitors. Sutherland had MacArthur's confidence, he had
an ego, and he had rank. In the interim after
MacArthur fired Brett, Sutherland locked the air chief out
of the American high command in Australia and began
scheduling the bombing missions.

A few
days after arriving in Australia, General Kenney became
aware that General Sutherland was already usurping his own
authority as the new air chief, and was continuing to order bombing
missions. The
showdown that General Arnold had feared when he assigned
Kenney to the FEAAF came in Kenney's first week on the
job. His reaction vividly illustrates the kind of man and
indomitable leader Kenney was. Ultimately, over the next year
General George C. Kenney would
contribute more to MacArthur's success in the Pacific than
perhaps any other single individual.

On the
date of the first showdown an obviously irate General Kenney strode directly into Sutherland's
office, perched on his desk, and grabbed a pencil and a
piece of paper. Drawing a small dot in the center of
the paper, Kenney looked General Sutherland in the eyes
and stated: "THAT is what YOU know about air
power. The rest of the sheet is what I know about
it."

Sutherland
was caught off-guard and blustered. Kenney met his
reaction firmly and stated flatly, "Let's go...see
General MacArthur. I want to find out who is
supposed to run this air force.

The
question of who was in charge of the air war in the
Pacific was settled in that moment. Sutherland
backed down and the road was paved for air officers to
begin planning their own missions and controlling their
own destiny in the Pacific for the years to come.
General Arnold would later say of Kenney, "No air
commander ever did so much with so little."

MacArthur
was even more glowing in his later assessment, stating, "Of
all the commanders of our major air forces engaged in
World War II, none surpassed General Kenney in those three
great essentials of successful combat leadership:
aggressive vision, mastery over air strategy and tactics,
and the ability to exact the maximum in fighting qualities
from both men and equipment."

The leadership and tactical genius of
George Kenney endeared him to MacArthur, because the highly resourceful airman
ultimately validated his
commander's oft-risky strategies and contributed materially to their
success. It is no infringement upon Kenney's abilities to note as well,
that his own early success in building a viable air force out of the
debris of the FEAAF were largely the result of the vision, hard work, and
leadership of Generals Walker and
Whitehead.

General Kenney established his
headquarters at Brisbane, Australia, where MacArthur was himself headquartered. From there
Kenney could issue orders for bombing missions in the combat theaters. To
carry out those missions, General Walker was named commander of all Allied air
assets in the region. In
September, with the reorganization of the FEAAF as the new 5th Air Force,
General Walker was named commander of the 5th Bomber Command. In both roles
he was based out of Townsville, north of Brisbane.

General
Whitehead was dispatched north across the 600-mile expanse of the Coral Sea to
operate as the forward echelon commander. His command operated out of Port Moresby. The
tenuously held Allied city and port were the forward staging areas for
the bombing missions General Walker launched out of Townsville.

When Kenny left Washington, D.C., for
Australia he had told
General Arnold, "I am going to get rid of a lot of Air Corps
deadwood." Upon his arrival he did just that, not only in
terms of personnel but also in terms of procedures. On August 9 General
George C. Marshall established the 5th Air Force, delegating command to
Kenney. Kenney determined to build that command as a fighting Air Force, not a
paper-work jungle and administrative boondoggle. Once, upon learning that it
was not uncommon for needed supplies to be delayed because of improperly
filled out paper work, he simplified the procedures immediately with the biting
comment: "You don't win wars with file cabinets."

While Kenny was getting rid of the
"deadwood" and organizing his 5th Air Force (though authorized on
August 9 it was not formalized until September 3), General Whitehead and Ken
Walker were refining operations and building infrastructure. Kenney had
indicated that he intended to take an active role in the combat mission of his
Air Force, issuing orders from Brisbane to Walker at Townsville. In that
first month however, the need for organizational and administrative changes
kept him occupied and left Walker with the freedom to plan and organize the
missions himself.

The month of August 1942 was an important
one for
Ken Walker. It was a trial period for his own concepts of strategic
bombardment, along with constant re-evaluation and revision based upon
changing conditions and tactical necessity. Of the effort during that
period General Kenney noted, "(We are) inventing new ways to win a war
on a shoestring. We are doing things nearly every day that were never in
the books. It really is remarkable what you can do with an airplane if
you really try; anytime I can't think of something screwy enough, I have a
flock of people out here to help me."

On August 7, U.S. Marines landed at
Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands, expanding the air force area of
operations eastward to support the men on the ground. Even as desperate
as the situation was on Guadalcanal, however, perhaps the most tenuous Allied
position was at Port Moresby on the Papuan Peninsula of New Guinea. This
was the
seaport city where General Whitehead was trying to establish airfields and
logistical support for the raids launched by Walker out of Townsville.

The
Desperate Weeks

The Papuan Peninsula juts out into the
Coral Sea from the east side of New Guinea, with Port Moresby on its southern
coast. Only 600 miles from Australia, in 1942 Port Moresby was the only
Allied stronghold in the region. It was the last line of defense between Tokyo and
Australia. Invading and taking Port Moresby (Operation MO) had been the
primary objective of the Japanese incursion that led to the Battle of the
Coral Sea on May 7 & 8, 1942. Despite the failure of that
invasion, the
Japanese refused to concede the important port to the Allies. In July
the Japs landed thousands of seasoned jungle fighters along the northern coast of
the peninsula, fortifying positions at Lae, Salamaua, Gona, Buna, and points in
between.

While General Whitehead busied himself
with turning Port Moresby into a forward staging area for the missions Walker
was dispatching out of Townsville, the Japanese were doing their best to gain
control of the important seaport. On August 13 more than 11,000 Japanese
troops began the arduous march over the Owen Stanley Range, quickly routing the valiant but grossly outnumbered Australian defenders.
American bombing
missions were mounted repeatedly against Buna, Lae, Rabaul and other Japanese
targets, but they seemed futile to stemming the steady influx of soldiers and
supplies.

Meanwhile, on August 25, the Japanese
landed more than 1,200 troops at Milne Bay at the far east side of the
peninsula. They followed up by reinforcing them with an additional 1,200 jungle fighters the
following day. Ten days of fierce battle raged before the enemy force
was forced to retreat. When the 1,300 Japanese survivors of the failed
Milne Bay invasion pulled out on September 5, it signaled the first ground
defeat of the Japanese forces in the Pacific. It was a badly needed
piece of good news that at last contradicted the common perception of Japanese invincibility.

When Japanese ships pulled out of Milne
Bay to evacuate survivors of the failed assault, enemy forces moving
on Port Moresby from the north had advanced down the southern slopes of the Owen Stanley
Range and were less than 30 miles from the port city. It was a somber,
uncertain time. With their backs to the wall, resistance by the
Australian soldiers stiffened and the tide of battle began to turn. In Australia General
MacArthur was eager to commit his first American ground forces to the battle
but was hampered by the 600-mile expanse of Japanese infested ocean.
General Kenney suggested using the Air Force to quickly transport troops and
equipment to reinforce Port Moresby. Fifty years after World War II the
concept seems a logical solution, but in 1942 it was a novel, untried
approach. In mid-September Fifth Air Force C-47s began the transport of half of
two full combat teams of the 32nd Infantry Division to New Guinea. They
were joined at the end of the month by the remainder of their troops and
personnel who came by ship.

The success of the airmobile infantry concept endeared
Kenney to General MacArthur, and gave the Supreme Commander a new
appreciation for his airmen. Where General Brett had seldom seen
MacArthur and was totally excluded from his inner circle from April to July,
General Kenney and his air combat leadership became an integral part of
strategy and planning. When Hap Arnold visited Australia at the
end of September, MacArthur told him General Kenney was "a real leader and
has the finest bunch of pilots I have ever seen."

MacArthur was
equally full of praise for Generals Walker and Whitehead.

When Port Moresby was at last secured in
mid-September the
Allies went on the offensive. Japanese troops and material poured
daily into the large harbor at Rabaul, from which the enemy made nightly runs
to resupply their forces at New Guinea and in the Solomon Islands. As a
result, Kenneth Walker's 5th Bombardment Group had no shortage of
targets. Missions were mounted against airfields at
Lae and Buna, enemy positions along the northern coast of New Guinea,
shipping ports and airfields at Rabaul, troops transports and resupply ships
throughout the Bismarck and Solomon Seas.

On September 21 The Seattle Daily News
reported on General Walker's leadership and efforts in the air missions in the battle for New Guinea:

General Roams Over Plane
While His Boys Raid Japs

By
Associated Press.
GENERAL MacARTHUR'S HEADQUARTERS, Australia

A young American general aims at flying with his
boys against the Japanese at least once a week and
shows he means business by going on 11 raids in less
than two months. He is Brig. Gen. K. N. Walker, 43
years old, of Washington, D.C., whose wife and two
sons aged 14 and 9, live in the United States
Capitol.Boys All Like Him
"The boys in the south of Australia think the
world of him," said the general's aid and pilot
Capt. Fred P. Dollenberg of Philadelphia.
"They figure things aren't so bad if a
general's willing to go along and get shot at."
Carrying a bottle of oxygen, General Walker moves
about a plane as it flies on its mission at a high
altitude, Captain Dollenberg said."He
climbs through the bomb bay and watches the rear
gunner or the side gunners blast at Zeroes and when
we are over the target he watches the bombardier as
he gets set to drop his bombs," he went on.
"Wandering all over a
plane like that isn't healthy but the general
figures he can't tell the boys how to go out and get
shot at unless he's willing to get shot at
too."

General Walker, one of the youngest generals in the
United States Army Air Forces, was in the War Plans
Division in Washington before coming to Australia
about three months ago.
The latest raid in which he
took part was one against Rabaul, New Britain, deep in
Japanese-occupied territory, last Friday night. Fires
were started which were visible 50 miles away.
The general rode in a Flying Fortress
on that trip. September 12 he was over Buna, New
Guinea in what was probably the heaviest raid of the
Southwest Pacific area. On that occasion, Flying
Fortresses, medium and attack bombers and fighters
destroyed at least 27 Japanese planes and probably
more on the ground.One Mission A Week "The general doesn't
talk much about the raids," Dollenberg said,
"But he figures he can't direct flights from the
ground and tell the boys what they are doing wrong.
"So he goes along and
directs a flight from the air. If a plane gets
out of formation he shouts his orders over the radio
to get the hell back in line.
"The general figures on
going on at leas one mission a week. In less
than two months he been up with almost every
squadron."

The high praise of General MacArthur and
the glowing reports in the Times aside, the bombing campaign had
actually not been going well. RAAF fighter pilots had played a pivotal
role in turning back the enemy invasion at Milne Bay but Japanese Zeroes still
had aerial superiority over the Owen Stanley Range. Meanwhile the infusion of new
soldiers and war material flowed into Rabaul unabated. High altitude
bombing of the airfields at Rabaul and the ships in its harbor had resulted in
little damage and few, if any, enemy ships sunk. General Walker was
trying to refine his tactics, which had always been based upon large armadas
of bombers attacking from formation at high altitudes. Because of the shortage of aircraft and replacement parts for damaged planes,
most bombing raids could mount only a half-dozen Flying Fortresses for any
single mission.

Kenney began to doubt the wisdom of high-altitude
daylight attacks and started urging low-level, night bombing missions.
Walker initially resisted, resulting in some tension between the two
commanders.

To add to that tension, early in October
Kenney ordered Walker and Whitehead to quit flying on the bombing
missions. While the intelligence information and understanding of
operations the two generals had gained
from previous missions had been lauded, Kenney felt his two top field officers
were too important to risk on further missions.

With his 5th Air Force operating well at
the administrative level, General Kenney also began to take a more active role
in the day-to-day missions with increased concern for their lack of major impact. On October 4
six B-17s bombed anti-aircraft batteries at Buna. Simultaneously, six B-25s attacked a Japanese
convoy without hitting anything, and eleven B-17s made a bombing raid on
Rabaul. Kenney recorded, "Reports show formation did not
hold. (I) Wrote Walker and told him to stop piecemeal attacks."

General Kenney began to push harder for
low-level night bombing missions, and the use of skip bombs and instant fuses. The concepts were alien to all that Walker had ever
espoused and, he felt, were needlessly dangerous to the safety of his men. He
resisted when he could, grudgingly acquiesced when he could not resist.

It would be unfair to either man to
define the disagreements that marked the two men's relationship throughout
November and December as a rift. Kenney wanted results; Walker's
resistance to Kenney's ideas may have been seated more in concern for the
safety of his men. Ultimately, most of Kenney's methods proved accurate,
especially in the case of skip-bombing which greatly improved the efficiency
of the bombers against Japanese ships. According to one unverified story
from the period, at one point when Kenney pulled rank Ken Walker abruptly saluted him
and spit out, "Okay, but (expletive) you, George."

Walker's boss was man enough, and had
enough respect for Walker's knowledge and ability, to brush off the
incident. "Ken is O.K.," he wrote. "(He
is) stubborn, oversensitive and a prima donna but works like a dog."

In November General MacArthur moved his
headquarters to Port Moresby though it was still subject to regular attack from
Japanese airplanes based at Lae, Buna and elsewhere in the region.
Taking complete control of New Guinea was key to his island hopping
strategy to fight his way back to the Philippines. General Kenney
convinced MacArthur that aerial superiority of the region was the key to
success, stating in his typically blunt fashion that there was no sense, "Playing
across the street" until the Allies chased the Japanese troops "off
our front lawn."

On November 30 MacArthur summoned his
most aggressive American commander, General Robert Eichelberger, to his Port
Moresby headquarters. He tasked him with leading Allied forces to capture
Buna. "Bob," he admonished as he issued the orders, "take Buna or don't come
back alive."

That critical mission would take more than a month,
but Buna fell on January 9, 1943. Organized Japanese resistance in New
Guinea ended on January 23 . The Allied victory was possible in large
part due to the 5th Air Force, which flew 611 combat missions during the
seven-week period.

5th Air Force MissionsNov. 1, 1942 to Jan.
23, 1943

Aerial
Recon
& Observation

Armed
Recon, Escort
& Patrols

Attacks
on Enemy
Aircraft

Bombing
& Strafing
Missions

TOTALS

Heavy Bombers

116

1

47

164

Medium Bombers

45

88

133

Light Bombers

28

74

102

Fighter Aircraft

35

38

3

63

139

Miscellaneous

73

73

Reprimand
or Medal?

To fully understand Rabaul's importance
to the Japanese effort in the South Pacific, one might think of it as the
Empire's own "Pearl Harbor". Just as the port on
Oahu provided American forces a headquarters and staging point for operations
throughout the Pacific, Rabaul was the hub for the Japanese offensive in the
Pacific. Located at the northern tip of New Britain Island, the
excellent port was 2,800 miles from Tokyo via a shipping lane through waters
the Japanese navy dominated. The flow of troops and supplies from Japan
could continue nearly unhindered, but for a few American submarines that
managed to sneak into the area from time to time.

The harbor itself was deep and sheltered,
and the docks and wharves at Rabaul were well-suited for a major distribution
point. From Rabaul the influx of necessary men and material were dispersed quickly and easily throughout the theater of combat. In the
darkness of night, massive Japanese convoys transported thousands of troops, material
and ammunition into the Solomon Islands where U.S. Marines were struggling to
control Guadalcanal. Those nightly convoys became known as The
Tokyo Express. Similarly, it was also a quick trip from Rabaul to
reinforce Japanese positions on the Papuan Peninsula, where the Allies were at last beating back the invading
forces on the northern coastline.

Throughout the winter of 1942 the 5th Air
Force flew repeated bombing missions against Rabaul in efforts to stem this
flow of Japanese shipping. Such missions over the important port were both
harrowing and often fatal. Staging out of Port Moresby, the bombers had
to first traverse the Owen Stanely Range which was well protected by Japanese
Zeroes from airbases at Lae and Buna. Then they had to cross hundreds of
miles of enemy infested waters, cross New Britain Island, and then somehow
arrive safely over Rabaul to drop their bombs. It was no small feat and
was made nearly impossible by the port's heavy defenses. Activity around
Rabaul peaked at the end of December with the presence of 21 Japanese warships
and 300,000 tons of merchant shipping.

Rabaul
was protected by four major Japanese airfields to the south (Keravat,
Vunakanau, Tobera and Rapopo) as well as the Lakunai Airfield located near the
docks. In December 1942 the Japanese Eighth Area Army Headquarters moved
to Rabaul. On the first day of 1943 Colonel Nagaaki Kawai assumed
command of the anti-aircraft defenses on the Gazelle Peninsula with a force
equivalent to seven battalions, supplemented by five field machine cannon
companies.

Despite these formidable defenses,
American pilots flew nearly daily bombing missions against Rabaul throughout
December and until January 2. On January 3 General Kenney learned
through decoded Japanese communications that a major convoy was being mounted
at Rabaul to reinforce Lae. The convoy was scheduled to depart the
harbor on January 6. To conserve the strength of his exhausted pilots
and his combat-depleted bombers, Kenney ordered no missions against Rabaul on
January 4 and 5 while noting in his reports: "Told Walker to
intensify reccos (reconnaissance) on both N and S of New Britain...and to put
on a full-scale B-17 attack on Rabaul Harbor at dawn on the 5th to see if we
can break it up at the source."

Ken Walker welcomed this new mission as
perhaps providing the first real opportunity to test his ideas of large
formation, daylight bombing raids. In prior months the missions of his
command had usually been single-plane reconnaissance flights or small (six or
fewer aircraft) night bombing raids. The proposed January 5 mission was
to include more than a dozen aircraft from Port Moresby, including six B-17s
and six B-24s. These were to be joined by a flight of B-24s out of Iron
Range on Australia's Cape York. The two groups were to rendezvous in the
air over Cape Hood and proceed to Rabaul. Then General Kenney threw in a
new wrinkle. Since there would be no fighter escort, he wanted the attack
to commence with the dawn.

Walker protested, and not just because
this would deny him the chance to conduct the massive daylight mission that
was the basis of his strategic doctrine. With the mission scheduled to
include bombers from two separate elements, a dawn mission would require the
aircraft to take off in the early morning and rendezvous in the air during
hours of pre-dawn darkness. Such a rendezvous was difficult enough
during daylight hours, nearly impossible at night.

Walker presented arguments for a noon
strike, noting that in the darkness the B-24s from Iron Range might not be
able to find and join the dozen bombers from Port Moresby. Kenney
refused to alter his plan, advising Walker that he would rather have the two
flights miss their rendezvous and bomb Rabaul separately at dawn, than to have
them successfully meet under the lightened skies then attack the port in broad
daylight. In his report he noted, "Nip fighters are never up at
dawn, but at noon they will not only give our bombers hell but will ruin our
bombing accuracy."

Ken Walker had always believed that enemy
fighters were not a matter for consideration in planning the kind of mission
scheduled for January 5. His manta had always been: "The
well-organized, well-planned, and well-flown air force (bombing) attack
will constitute an offensive that cannot be stopped." Already
his B-17s had proven they were capable of holding their own against
enemy Zeroes, and with more than a dozen bombers scheduled for the Rabaul
mission Walker was certain that a carefully controlled formation would fend off
any opposition.

When the mission was launched the fact
that the B-17s didn't depart from Jackson Field near Port Moresby until 8:00
a.m. was obviously contrary to General Kenney's orders. In Walker's
defense this may not have been a calculated act of defiance. Weather on
the morning of September 5 was poor and rain delayed takeoff for the B-24s at
Iron Range. General Walker may have postponed his own departure in hopes
it would clear up enough for them to take off. On Cape York the rain
continued and those B-24s never were never able to launch. Weather did
improve enough on the Papuan Peninsula for the six B-17s to eventually take
off and join the six B-24s from Port Moresby.

This plausible excuse aside, General
Walker's decision to take off at 8:00 a.m. for a noon raid over Rabaul may
have indeed been a defiant act motivated by his desire to finally test his
bombing concepts. Such was also in character for General Kenneth
Walker. What is without question is that General Walker further defied Kenney's
orders by electing to join the mission himself.

Mission records reveal that this was not
the first time since General Kenney grounded his top bomber commander early in
October that Walker had defied him to fly with his men. After joining a
mid-December reconnaissance mission Kenney had reminded BOTH Walker and
Whitehead that they were far to important to the mission of the 5th Air Force
to be risked on aerial missions. He insisted that Walker was simply excess
baggage in a B-17, but was the best bombardment commander he had.

On January 5 the bomber carrying that excess
baggage was the lead B-17 named "San Antonio Rose" and
bearing the tail numbers 41-24453. It was piloted by Lieutenant Colonel
Jack Bleasdale, executive officer for the 43rd Bombardment Group.

At noon Colonel Bleasdale was over Rabaul
and making his bombing run on a harbor filled with enemy ships. Behind
him five more B-17s were opening their bomb bay doors and picking their own
targets. The enemy was caught totally unaware, but Jap gunners responded quickly to
fill the heaven with a curtain of bursting anti-aircraft fire. Inside
the San Antonio Rose General Walker was probably taking pictures
of the action for later analysis. Before the mission he had mentioned to one
of the other crews that he had just purchased a new camera and would be taking
it on the mission.

By the time the B-24s were on target the
ships below were billowing smoke and flames while the B-17s were trying to pull
out and head for home. When the second wave made its run over the
target, Japanese Zeroes were at last entering the fray from the nearby
airfields. Navigator William Whitaker from one of the B-24s noticed the
lead B-17 had fallen out of formation and was circling below with several
Zeroes on its tail. He assumed it was General Walker's bomber.

Fred Wesche was in the B-17 following the
San Antonio Rose before it fell out of formation and he recalled, "No
sooner had we dropped our bombs than my tail gunner said, 'Hey, there's
somebody in trouble behind us.' So we made a turn and looked back and
here was an airplane, one of our airplanes, going down, smoking and on fire,
not necessarily fire, but smoke anyway, and headed down obviously for a cloud
bank with a whole cloud of fighters on top of him. There must have been
15 or 20 fighters. Of course they gang up on a cripple, you know, polish that
one off with no trouble, but he disappeared into a cloud bank and we never saw
him again. It turns out it was the general. General Walker was on
board."

The January 5, 1943, daylight bombing
raid on Rabaul was highly successful. As many as ten Japanese ships were
damaged and the 5,833-ton Keifuku Maru was sunk. All six B-24s
were shot up but managed to return home. The six B-17s suffered similar
damage. Only four of them returned home.

General Kenney noted in his diary, "Walker
off late. Disobeyed orders by going along as well as not starting his mission
when I told him." Then the air chief launched an immediate and
wide ranging search for any sign of the downed bomber and his general.

Kenney was reporting to General MacArthur
when news reached him that search planes had spotted an American airplane down
in a coral reef in the Trobriands. With a sigh of relief General Kenney
told MacArthur, "When Walker gets back her, I'm going to officially
reprimand him and send him to Australia on leave for a couple of weeks."

A less optimistic Douglas MacArthur
responded:

"If
he doesn't come back.....

.....I'm putting him
in for the Medal of Honor!"

On March 25, 1943, 16-year-old
Kenneth Walker, Jr., was invited to the White House to receive his
father's Medal of Honor from President Roosevelt. Though General
Walker had been missing for nearly three months he was still listed as Missing
In Action, thus the Medal was not presented posthumously.

Douglas MacArthur had kept his
word. The airplane sighted in the search for Walker had proven to
be the
second B-17 that went down on the January 5 mission to Rabaul. On
the day following the raid her crew, minus two men who were killed in the
crash, were rescued by a Catalina flying boat.

While the search continued for
Kenneth Walker, his 10-year-old son Douglas subsequently accepted the
Legion of Merit awarded his father for his important work on AWPD-1, the
aerial warfare plan that ultimately bombed Hitler into defeat.

Post-war efforts at the recovery of
American remains and accounting for those missing in action failed to
turn up anything conclusive. There were some indications that
Walker and the crew of the San Antonio Rose might have been
captured. There are other reasons to believe that even the Japanese knew nothing of his
fate. Indeed, B-17 #41-24453 may had been swallowed up the the
dense jungle of the South Pacific, or found its final resting place at
the floor of the ocean.

The only certain information that
remains of General Walker's fate is that he died an American hero.
He was a man of flawed character in many ways--for he was indeed human
as are all of our REAL heroes. Perhaps it might even be said that
those same character flaws that prompted him to say in the spring of
1942, "I've
made a terrible mess of things", were in fact the same QUALITIES
and STRENGTHS that motivated him to do what was necessary to become an
Air Force legend during some of our nation's darkest and most critical
months of World War II.

Demas Craw &
Pierpont HamiltonThe Banker and the
Soldier

Special Acknowledgement: The author
would like to express his sincere appreciation to Douglas Walker, General
Kenneth Walker's son. Shortly after establishing HomeOfHeroes.com I was
privileged to engage in numerous contacts with Douglas Walker, who provided much
of the information and photographs that were necessary to properly share this
story of his father.

A special Video Tapeof the
the Dec 7, 2001 memorial service to General Walker (including interviews
with his sons Kenneth and Douglas and rare footage of his last air
mission), can be ordered on line from: http://www.pacificghosts.com/video/walker/